Nico Rosberg has apologised to his Mercedes teammate Michael Schumacher after impeding him during today's qualifying session.

Speaking after the session which many predicted would be blighted by traffic, especially with three more drivers than in previous seasons, Schumacher said: "I have to say from my perspective that all of our colleagues drove very fairly. The only car that blocked me was my team mate.

"It's a shame but there you go," he added, referring to the incident which took place in Q3 when there were only 10 cars on the track.

Rosberg subsequently revealed that he had apologised to his teammate though team boss Ross Brawn admitted that it was the team that was at fault having sent out the youngster at the wrong time.

"There was a problem with Nico's car getting out of the garage," said the Englishman. "The last thing we wanted was to have our two cars on the same piece of track, the plan was to split them but when we came to release Nico's car we had a problem with releasing it. It left the garage 20 or 30 seconds later than we planned. So then we had both cars together and Nico was getting squeezed.

"I think Michael was annoyed after the second or third lap, when I explained to him what happened he was OK, just frustrated," he added. "We cocked up."